By Jacqueline Shoyeb, The Arizona Republic
It has been more than a year since he was last on the dusty battlefields of Iraq, but Steve Soha hasn’t given up his calling to serve.
Soha, 42, is a Phoenix police lieutenant and Marine Corps reservist who is used to trading in his police badge for military fatigues.
“It’s in the blood,” he said, sitting in his small, still-empty office at the South Mountain Precinct. “Somebody’s got to do it. Why not me?”
Soha is one of about 100 reservists in the Phoenix Police Department, Sgt. Randy Force said.
“Searching the house for bad guys is much the same in Phoenix, Arizona, as it is in the war zone,” he said.
Nine department reservists are on military call-up but the organization has nearly 3,300 employees, he said.
For Soha, working as a police officer and reservist go hand in hand and, he said, the military interruptions have not been a problem.
“I always knew I wanted to be a Marine and a police officer,” Soha said.
The New York native began his police career just out of high school for a New Jersey police department.
He joined the Phoenix police in 1988.
In 1984 Soha had left police work for the Marine Corps, to follow in the footsteps of his father, a Marine veteran and retired Mesa police officer.
“I knew that I could always go back to being a police officer,” he said, “but later in life, I wouldn’t be able to join the Marines.”
Soha has risked his life in four military conflicts: the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, Afghanistan and most recently in Iraq again.
In between his Phoenix police and military careers, Soha earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Grand Canyon University.
Shifting in and out of service has toyed with his sense of time and caused him to miss a few special moments.
“I’ve been gone for two years, but coming back here, it’s almost like it’s a separate life type of thing,” he said. “When I’m saying a year ago, I’m thinking three years.”
Soha said it’s more difficult to transition from home than work because of notifying of credit card companies, banks and insurance companies.
Days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he was deployed to Egypt, Afghanistan and Kuwait, and he ultimately landed in Iraq in 2003.
A day after he shipped out to Afghanistan in December 2001, his first child was born three weeks early.
“Some sacrifices have to be made,” he said. “There are many out there who have missed multiple births.”
His wife e-mailed him pictures, but Soha didn’t meet his son until he was 7 months old.
“What was wild was seeing him grow, seeing how much he was changing while I was gone,” he said.